Luna: New Moon

We strapped in, suited and helmeted, no windows, the screens off. We had done it twenty times before but I still fumbled with the straps, the safety checklist. I wasn’t ready. No one could be, for a thing like this. I couldn’t stop thinking about the hydrogen tanks before and behind me, the oxygen tank under my feet. I was rigid with fear. Then I found there was a place beyond that fear – not calm, not beautiful, nor resigned or helpless, but firm and resolute.

Then the OTV rolled out and it went cunk cunk cunk over the strip where its tyres had developed flat spots from the standing. Fifty years and I remember it all so clearly. I felt us turn on to the strip, I felt the spaceplane pause, then the engines fire. Oh my! The power! You won’t have felt anything like it, not even if you’ve gone by the BALTRAN. It’s like every part of you, yelling. And I found out what was beyond the resolution beyond the fear. Excitement. Pure excitement. This was the sexiest thing I had ever done.

The engines cut out. A slight shock: the payload pod had unlatched. We were in free fall. I felt my stomach begin to unravel, the acid bile burning up my throat. Vomiting in your helmet is not just vile. It can drown you. Then I felt centrifugal force tug at the base of my stomach and I knew the tether had us and was swinging us up into a transfer orbit to the cycler. The gees peaked, the blood rushed to my toes. Freefall again. The next touch of weight I would feel would be in the centrifuge arms of the cycler.

A judder. A lurch, loud clunks and clangs and servo whine. We had docked with the cycler. Our belts released. I pushed myself free towards the open lock. It looked far too small even for small me. But I was through, we were all through, all twenty-four of us.

I stayed a time in the lock, clinging to a stanchion, fighting nausea, looking through a tiny window at the spaceplane hanging against the huge blue Earth. It was too big, too close to reveal the movement of the cycler, rushing away from it. But I felt it. I was out on the moon path, me: Adriana Maria do Céu Mão de Ferro Arena de Corta.

FOUR

Two kisses for Adriana Corta, one for each cheek. A small gift, wrapped in Japanese print paper, soft as fabric.

‘What is it?’

Lucas loves to bring his mother gifts when he visits. He is assiduous: at least once a week he takes the tram to Boa Vista and meets his mother in the Santa Barbra pavilion.

‘Open it,’ Lucas Corta says.

He sees delight dawn across his mother’s face as she carefully unwraps the paper and catches the tell-tale perfume of the gift. He loves the management of emotion.

‘Oh Lucas, you shouldn’t have. It’s so expensive.’

Adriana Corta opens the tiny jar and breathes in the full aroma of the coffee. Lucas sees years and hundreds of thousands of kilometres roll across her face.

‘I’m afraid it’s not Brazilian.’ Coffee is more expensive than gold. Gold is cheap on the moon, valued only for its beauty. Coffee is more precious than alkaloids and diamorphines. Printers can synthesise narcotics; no printer has ever produced a coffee that tasted of anything other than shit. Lucas doesn’t have the taste for coffee – too bitter, and it is a liar. It never tastes the way it smells.

‘I will keep it,’ Adriana says, closing the jar and for a moment pressing it to her heart. ‘Something special. I’ll know the time. Thank you, Lucas. Have you called Amanda?’

‘I thought I might pass on it this time.’

Adriana passes no comment, not even a look. Lucas’s marriage to Amanda Sun has been etiquette for years now.

‘And Lucasinho?’

‘I cut off his money. I think Ariel gave him some. Dirty cash. What does it say about the family?’

‘Let him have his head.’

‘At some point the boy will have to take some responsibility.’

‘He’s seventeen. When I was that age I was running around with every boy and girl I could lay my hands on. He needs to run wild. By all means cut his money off – it’s good for him to live on his wits. It showed initiative, that trick with the escape suit.’

‘Wits? He’s not been graced with many of those. He takes after his mother.’

‘Lucas!’

Lucas winces at the rebuke.

‘Amanda is still family. We don’t put the bad mouth on family. And you have no right to be displeased with Ariel. Her seat in the White Hare isn’t even warm, and you’re compromising her position.’

‘We got the Chinese deal. We beat out the Mackenzies.’

‘I enjoyed that very much, Lucas. The handball shirts were a nice touch. We’re indebted to you. But sometimes there are bigger issues than family.’

‘Not to me, Mamãe. Never to me.’

‘You’re your father’s son, Lucas. Your father’s true son.’

Lucas accepts the praise, though to him it is bitter, like coffee. His father he has never known. He has only ever wanted to be his mother’s son.

‘Mamãe, can I speak in confidence?’

‘Of course, Lucas.’

‘I’m worried about Rafa.’

‘I wish Rachel hadn’t taken Robson to Crucible. And so soon after the assassination attempt. One could mistake it for conspiracy.’

‘Rafa’s convinced it is.’